Abstract
The April 2014 issue of Public Works Management & Policy contains five interesting research papers.
“Transportation Capital in the United States: A Multimodal General Equilibrium Analysis” by Chen and Haynes introduces a new general equilibrium approach to evaluate the economic impact of public transportation capital stock in the United States. The study provides a direct method for policymaker and transportation planning practitioner to compare social and economic benefits of different modes of public transportation. Interestingly, their findings indicate that road stock has the highest contribution to the growth of GDP and levels of social welfare; public transit and other ground passenger transportation have the least impact on the U.S. economy among the four modes studied.
Water and wastewater infrastructure (W&WI) in the United States is in need of immediate capital investments and support from the federal government has declined significantly in the last two decades, forcing state and local governments to contribute a larger share. In “Capital Investment and Privatization: Public Opinion on Issues Related to Water and Wastewater Infrastructure,” Vedachalam, Kay, and Riha show that with increased decentralization of infrastructure decision-making, public opinion is playing an ever greater role. Questions on capital investment, privatization, and concern for W&WI were part of a national omnibus survey of 1,000 respondents in the United States conducted in 2012 and this paper demonstrates that an informed electorate and a responsive government can together address complex challenges facing the water and wastewater sector.
In “Using Pavement Management to Support Maintenance and Engineering Policy Decisions for Small and Mid-Sized Municipalities,” James Bryce et al. describe a pavement management system (PMS) developed for the town of Christiansburg, VA, and the effectiveness of pavement management applications as a decision support tool. The expected pavement performance was modeled using age data along with surface condition information and the results indicated that implementing the PMS provided a framework that significantly enhanced the ability of the municipality’s engineers to determine the optimal work types and work scenarios for long-term budgeting and planning purposes.
Linear assets such as roads, pipelines, and railroad tracks are defined assets whose length plays a critical role in their maintenance but are difficult to physically access and inventory condition information. To address this problem, some transportation agencies are investigating technologies that will assist in solving this asset inventory problem. “Investigating Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for Linear Asset Management” by Mwakalonge, Perkins, and Jones evaluates the feasibility of utilizing RFID technology as a means of gathering, verifying, and storing information for linear assets.
Raised pavement markers (RPMs) have been used in Ohio for the last four decades to provide visual guidance to motorists under inclement weather conditions. “Performance Evaluation of Wet Pavement Markings in Ohio” by Abbas, Sarker, and Frankhouser reports on a study by the Ohio Department of Transportation to evaluate the performance of alternative pavement marking materials and determine whether they can provide equivalent or better delineation than the existing system. However, it was concluded that given the harsh environmental conditions in Ohio, RPMs still provide a cost-effective approach